


old flames can't warm you

by akisazame



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: 1.8 on the kinsey scale, Accidental Drug Use, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aphrodisiacs, F/F, Mildly Dubious Consent, Season/Series 02, but they're aware of that, happy pride month i made the girls kiss, some people bond by swapping hand jobs and that's Valid, weird drugged up metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 08:52:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19422634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisazame/pseuds/akisazame
Summary: Finally Valencia snaps back to reality, her dazed expression morphing into a scowl. "I cannotbelieveyou dragged me out here into the middle of the desert anddrugged me!""Oh my god, Valencia, I did notdrug you," Rebecca shoots back in what she thinks is a stage whisper. "We both thought there was just tea in those cups,andyou drank it of your own free will. Now can wepleasego back to our tent before either of us do something horribly embarrassing in public?""This isn't happening," Valencia moans as she lets Rebecca drag her through the encampment. "I don't want to be here, and I don't want to bond with you, and I definitely don't want to be here having a bonding drug trip with you."





	old flames can't warm you

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes you just want to make an episode gay and then you accidentally write sex pollen and you're like you know what? fine. happy pride!
> 
> title abridged from Don't Lie by Valencia's favorite band Vampire Weekend (and now that I've done that joke, I never have to do it again).

"Whoa, hold on," the not-actually-British woman says, slamming her palm down on top of the second cup of tea that Rebecca had been about to imbibe, "even if your tolerance is that high, I have to insist you wait five minutes. Something about liability."

"Um, what?" Valencia says.

"Triceratops tolerance," the woman clarifies. "The hallucinogen, Triceratops? AKA 3Tops? Meketyltrichlorocaine? I mean, I'm willing to look away. The way you choose to experience the 'tops is your own business, but—"

"Wait," Rebecca cuts in, staring wide-eyed at her empty plastic cup. "Did we just do drugs?"

It washes over her like a wave, fuzzing out the sound of the woman's response. Her stomach clenches and she thinks about throwing up for one fleeting moment before discarding the notion for a variety of reasons that her frantically whirling brain won't let her dwell upon. She staggers away from the counter, taking a few steps before realizing Valencia hasn't followed.

"Come on," she says, turning back and looping her fingers around Valencia's delicate wrist. "We need to like, get somewhere. To wait this out." She tugs on Valencia's arm, but Valencia doesn't budge; Rebecca doesn't know a thing about Valencia's tolerance levels, but she's intimately familiar with her own, and she knows that the lucidity she's still feeling now won't last much longer. "Valencia!"

Finally Valencia snaps back to reality, her dazed expression morphing into a scowl. "I cannot _believe_ you dragged me out here into the middle of the desert and _drugged me!_ "

"Oh my god, Valencia, I did not _drug you,_ " Rebecca shoots back in what she thinks is a stage whisper. "We both thought there was just tea in those cups, _and_ you drank it of your own free will. Now can we _please_ go back to our tent before either of us do something horribly embarrassing in public?"

"This isn't happening," Valencia moans as she lets Rebecca drag her through the encampment. "I don't want to be here, and I don't want to bond with you, and I definitely don't want to be here having a bonding drug trip with you."

Rebecca bites down hard on the inside of her cheek, tears welling up in her eyes for reasons she can't explain. "Well, it's not like you can leave," she says, redirecting her desperation into something resembling resigned exasperation, "because neither of us are driving my car while under the influence of dinosaur hallucinogens, so unless you manage to get that Uber app working, we're stuck here until one or the other of us come down." They reach Rebecca's tent and she drops to her knees, letting go of Valencia's wrist so she can crawl safely inside. "So, like, either come sit in here with me or don't." Her voice cracks on the last word, which she hopes will somehow make it a less enticing option.

Valencia wraps both arms across her stomach, fingers clenching agitatedly at the fabric of her — technically Rebecca's — tank top. "Ugh, fine," she finally says, crouching daintily and following Rebecca into the tent, "but only because I don't want to be responsible for crashing your stupid car."

"'S'not stupid," Rebecca mumbles into the fabric of her pillowcase as she curls onto her side on top of her sleeping bag. She can feel the synapses in her brain disconnect, one by one, and she wishes that she'd eaten something today other than the disparate parts of a smoothie inexplicably served in a bowl, something substantial that would've delayed the Triceratops from shooting through her system like a bolt of lightning. She squeezes her eyes shut and bites her lips closed, feeling dizzy and nauseated.

She thinks about Dairy Queen. She should've actually stopped at Dairy Queen yesterday. Not that it would've mattered now, since her body isn't exactly designed to make chicken strips and Blizzards stick around. Rebecca had been so sure that Valencia would bolt the second they pulled into the parking lot, but now she feels both regretful and guilty, because the least she could've done before kidnapping Valencia was treat her to the greasy fried food she'd promised. She wants to apologize, feels the words forming in her mouth, but she suddenly can't remember how to move her jaw to let them out.

When Rebecca cracks one eyelid open again, the light in the tent has shifted and dimmed, and she's startled to see Valencia's face a foot from her own. Valencia is lying on her own sleeping bag in a mirror of Rebecca's pose, eyes unfocused and staring somewhere just past Rebecca's shoulder. Rebecca's eyes feel damp and gummy, and she blinks several times ineffectually.

"Did I fall asleep?" Her pillowcase feels scratchy against her skin when she speaks, but not in a way that feels unpleasant, so she rubs her cheek against it a few times just to keep feeling it.

"Mmm, maybe a little bit? I kinda lost track." Valencia, clearly not as enamored of her pillowcase as Rebecca is of hers, props her head up on one hand. "How are you feeling?"

It should be a simple question, one that Rebecca has answered countless times before in both sincere and insincere ways, but after several long moments of consideration she realizes that she can't quite reach any sort of consensus. "Uh, kind of hot, I guess? And like, buzzy. Skin-wise."

Valencia nods as if this makes perfect sense. She seems to be looking in Rebecca's direction but somehow seeing past her, through her. "How long do you think this will last? Because I really just want to go home."

"Dunno." Rebecca lifts her hand in front of her face, just to make sure she hasn't actually gone transparent, and is relieved to find that she has not. The side of her hand brushes her pillow, and it somehow feels different on her hand skin than it does on her face skin. Weird. It's basically the same skin. "Hopefully not long. This is not connecting, or refreshing, or healing."

Valencia makes a discontented noise and rolls onto her back, staring blankly up at the curved fabric of the tent over their heads, and Rebecca presses her palm to her pillow and tries to let her eyes unfocus too. Tries to let her whole mind unfocus. But her body isn't obeying her commands, the electromagnetic impulses scrambling somewhere along the path from her brain, because she ends up focusing too much, staring intently at the side of Valencia's head until she can see every strand of hair, every pore, every freckle. She hadn't even realized Valencia had freckles, but she's certain she sees one right on the curve of Valencia's cheek and she stares at it, transfixed, wondering how she'd missed it before. 

She'd missed a lot of things about Valencia, she thinks. In both the sense of overlooked and in the sense of felt the absence of. Valencia is right here in front of her but suddenly Rebecca misses her so badly it's like a physical ache manifesting somewhere in her chest and radiating out, suffusing all her muscles and bones until it's all she can feel, all she can think about, all she can be.

She reaches for Valencia, her fingertips barely brushing the bare skin of her arm, and it feels _tingly,_ like electricity is leaping between their cells. Part of her wants to flinch back but the part that likes it wins out, and she presses her fingers against Valencia's skin more firmly, closing the circuit, letting Valencia's energy flow into her and fill all the dark empty places inside of her with boundless warmth and light.

She expects Valencia to pull away and is equal parts fascinated and horrified when she doesn't. Both feelings only intensify when Valencia rolls back over to face her, and this time she's not looking through or around but _at._

All at once the air between them seems to transform into a rapidly expanding chasm and Rebecca has to fill it before it swallows them both whole. "Tell me something," Rebecca says urgently, the words feeling like water in her mouth. She tightens her grip on Valencia's arm, fingers digging into the flesh and bone of her elbow, because she thinks she might float away otherwise. "Tell me something," she says again, because she's suddenly not sure whether she said it out loud the first time.

The Triceratops must have softened the jagged edges of Valencia's mood, because she whispers back, "Like what?"

Valencia's skin is so smooth, Rebecca thinks. Unrefined coconut oil, she thinks. _We're friends, right?_ she thinks. She thinks, she thinks, she thinks, her mind tumbling over and over itself, sparking and fizzing in the warm pool of water in her head. Her fingers glide up Valencia's arm, light enough that it might tickle, except suddenly Rebecca is the one laughing, curling her head in towards Valencia's chest.

"Hey," Valencia says. She grabs Rebecca's chin to tilt her head back up, thumb and forefinger pinching on either side, and Rebecca imagines them sinking deep into her flesh and meeting in the middle, which makes her giggle even more. "Hey!" Valencia says again, a little louder, a little more forcefully. Rebecca refocuses on Valencia's eyes, maybe three inches from her own, the black of her pupils threatening to overtake the brown of her irises, and she manages to choke her laughter back to quiet hiccups. "What should I tell you?"

"Tell me a secret," Rebecca whispers, like she's telling her own.

Now Valencia is the one giggling, her head tilting forward the slightest bit. It sounds like bells in Rebecca's ears and she never wants to stop hearing them. "What?"

"Like, um..." Rebecca trails off, mouth suddenly dry. "Um, okay, I'll start." Despite her statement, it takes Rebecca a moment to conjure something particularly secret-worthy from the tangled mess of her memories. "The first day I was in West Covina, I went to a strip club."

Valencia snorts a laugh and Rebecca wonders how she manages to make it sound dignified. Cute, even. "Oh, you mean Aluminum? The gay bar? I went to a bachelorette there."

"No, it was like... well, technically Fantasy, I guess, except spelled wrong? Related note, the West Covina planning department clearly needs a copy editor because—"

"Wait, stop," Valencia says, and Rebecca snaps her mouth shut, trapping the rest of her sentence inside. She tries not to imagine the syllables crowding inside and pushing against the backs of her teeth, and is only mostly successful. "The first thing you did in West Covina was watch women dance naked?"

Rebecca feels her cheeks get hot, strangely self-conscious under Valencia's scrutiny. "First of all, that's reductive. Sex work is a noble profession. Also, it wasn't the _first_ thing I did. I did many things. Went many places. Saw the sights. The sights just happened to include a scantily-clad woman and a pole."

"Did you..." Valencia starts, then stops, looking suddenly shy. It's not an expression Rebecca has ever seen on Valencia's face before; it looks out of place, like it's been photoshopped in from a different person entirely. From Rebecca's own face, maybe. "Never mind."

 _Did you,_ Valencia's voice echoes in Rebecca's head, ricocheting off the inside of her skull and fracturing and multiplying and expanding. _Did you, did you, did you, did you..._ "Did I what?" Rebecca asks, barely able to hear herself over the cacophony. Her hand tightens on Valencia's arm, nails digging into flesh. "Did I _what?_ "

"It's not important," Valencia insists. That foreign, uncertain expression is gone, replaced with another that Rebecca can't quite define, differently incongruous on Valencia's features. Before Rebecca's impaired brain can fully process what's happening, Valencia is closing the rest of the negligible gap between them, pressing their foreheads together and whispering, "I have to tell you my secret."

There's a bright flash of clarity in the haze of Rebecca's mind, and she opens her mouth to tell Valencia that it's fine, that she doesn't have to, that she shouldn't let Rebecca pressure her into baring her soul against her will after she's already been kidnapped and deceived and trapped. She wants to tell Valencia she's sorry for bringing her here, sorry for everything that happened with Josh, sorry for lying and lying and lying until it felt like the only safe path was to lie even more. She wants to say all of these things and probably dozens of others that she hasn't thought of yet, but then Valencia is kissing her and Rebecca can't think of anything at all.

Rebecca's heart speeds up like she's just crested the top of a rollercoaster and is trapped in that split second before gravity drags the cars back down, and she pulls away, frantic. "W- we can't," she says breathlessly. "We're not... we can't consent if we're..."

Valencia's forehead wrinkles like she's in pain, and Rebecca imagines smoothing the ridges away with her thumb, molding Valencia's face like it's clay. She's halfway to doing it before her nervous system gets confused and makes her tighten her grip on Valencia's waist instead. "But we're like, equally impaired, right?" Valencia's voice sounds strangely gravelly, and it makes Rebecca feel like she's kindling, sparking and smoking and catching on fire.

 _It doesn't work like that,_ Rebecca means to say, but she gets distracted by the way the tip of Valencia's tongue darts out to wet her lips. They had been so dry against Rebecca's own. Rebecca feels like her whole mouth is filling with cotton, and she imagines kissing Valencia again, open-mouthed, the cotton expanding and spreading down Valencia's throat. Rebecca coughs and rubs her sandpaper tongue over the roof of her mouth. "I just," she starts, but she suddenly can't think of the next word in the sentence, can't think of anything except Valencia's mouth, Valencia's hands, _Valencia Valencia Valencia_ and finally she blurts out, "Remember Spider's?"

"Uh, yeah?" Valencia barely raises one eyebrow, an echo of her usual judgmental arch. "There's spiders everywhere out here. It's gross."

"No," Rebecca insists, "the confusingly punctuated club. Where I, uh." She presses her fingers to her own lips, then to Valencia's, not wanting to say the word out loud but also not wanting to provide an actual demonstration. _Another_ actual demonstration.

Valencia's hand darts up and grips Rebecca's wrist, holding her hand in place. Rebecca curls her fingertips against the curve of Valencia's lower lip without meaning to. "I liked that," Valencia whispers.

Rebecca's heart thuds in her chest. "No, you didn't," she says. She tries to swallow but there's nothing in her mouth, so it's just an uncomfortable contraction of her throat that doesn't solve or change anything. "You hated it. Y- you said you never wanted to see me again."

 _I barely have you,_ Rebecca thinks desperately, _and I don't want to lose you again._

"I thought I hated it," Valencia is saying, her voice distorting somewhere on the path between her vocal cords and Rebecca's eardrums, "but I think what I hated was that I didn't hate it."

Rebecca feels suddenly lightheaded, and she's not sure if it's from the drugs or the kiss or the weight of Valencia's confession. "We can't..." she tries to reiterate, but her protest dies in her throat when Valencia slides her fingers over Rebecca's hip, up her side and under her shirt to graze the skin beneath, and Rebecca's whole body shudders because it feels _amazing,_ like somehow the Triceratops has caused all of her nerve endings to multiply. She wants so badly for Valencia to touch her everywhere, to seep through Valencia's fingers like sand.

"Please," Valencia starts to say, but she barely gets the whole word out before Rebecca surges forward to replace her fingers with her lips, to push her tongue into Valencia's mouth, to press her body flush against Valencia's until she feels like every atom in her body is vibrating, threatening to rip free from the whole. Valencia's body tenses, then relaxes, then tenses again as she pushes Rebecca onto her back, pressing her down into her sleeping bag and the hard ground beneath, her hand continuing its desperate path up Rebecca's chest beneath her shirt, and Rebecca suddenly feels hot all over in a way that's completely separate from the effects of the Triceratops. She pushes Valencia back just enough so she can strip her own shirt off, and after a beat of hesitation Valencia does the same before they crash together again, wave to shore.

Despite her promiscuous history and her certain bi tendencies this is the most sexual situation Rebecca has ever found herself in with someone who shares her anatomy, and she can't be certain but she's fairly sure Valencia is the same because there seems to be a half-second stutter before each movement Valencia makes: palms pressed flat against Rebecca's stomach, then sliding down and around and under to flick apart the clasps of Rebecca's bra, then back up to push the fabric away from Rebecca's scalding skin. Valencia is still kissing her when she brushes the pad of her thumb against Rebecca's nipple and Rebecca gasps into her mouth, the sensation overwhelmingly sharp.

Rebecca can't decide what she wants more: to feel that knife's edge of pleasure again, or to make Valencia feel it for herself.

"I... I have to know," Rebecca manages to say, once they finally break for air, "what exactly is on the table here, right now? Becau—" Valencia shifts on top of her, pressing her knee between Rebecca's thighs, and Rebecca makes a noise that she's never heard from her own throat before. "Because," she tries again, "full disclosure, I'm not like, up to date on all the new cool drugs but I'm pretty sure something in that tea was—"

"Aphrodisiac," Valencia agrees, her voice cracking with tension. She adjusts the angle of her leg so it's pressing against Rebecca more firmly; if Valencia's position had been an accident before, it's definitely not one now. "Let me touch you," Valencia breathes into Rebecca's ear, the words sliding viscous down Rebecca's neck and coating her skin, squeezing tight.

She has to wriggle away from Valencia to give herself enough room to push her pants and underwear down; they both freeze momentarily, startled, when Rebecca's car keys clatter to the ground beneath her, but then Valencia makes her cute dignified snort-laugh and Rebecca can't help but laugh along with her because it's _absurd._ This whole situation is absurd, Rebecca thinks wildly, and she's only saved from careening away by the sudden pressure of Valencia, pressing Rebecca back down on the sleeping bag, fitting her mouth to the curve of Rebecca's jaw, sliding her hand between Rebecca's legs.

It's not so different from anyone else who's touched her, except that Valencia knows the sort of things that might feel good; it's not so different from when Rebecca touches herself, except that everything is unexpected. Valencia's fingers graze Rebecca's clit and Rebecca _whines,_ arching up into it so violently that Valencia has to throw her other arm across Rebecca's hips to hold her down. It's too much, with the heightened sensation bestowed by the drugs in Rebecca's system, but she doesn't want it to stop. Couldn't form the words anyway, with the way the pleasure is expanding, pressure pulsing in her head. Then Valencia's fingers are inside her, palm curling against her to rub at her clit and Rebecca comes with a voiceless gasp; it seems like it lasts for ages, time dilating and fraying at the edges, the waves of it as unrelenting as Valencia's hand until it finally swerves into painful and Rebecca grabs Valencia's wrist, forcing her to still.

It takes several long moments for Rebecca to come back to herself, and when she does she realizes that Valencia is trembling, her pulse butterfly-fast in her wrist. Valencia had straddled Rebecca's leg at some point, and Rebecca doesn't think Valencia realizes that she's making minute movements against Rebecca's bare thigh, hot and unbelievably wet even through her leggings.

"Stop," Rebecca tells her. Her voice doesn't sound like her own. Valencia freezes, looks almost stricken, and Rebecca runs her hand up Valencia's thigh, presses her thumb into the crease. It comes away damp. "You should let me—" is all she gets out before Valencia dives in to kiss her again.

There was a certain appeal to the improvised, artless way Valencia had gotten her off but Rebecca thinks she can do better; after some equivocation Rebecca shifts their positions to her satisfaction, with Valencia's back pressed to Rebecca's chest, basically sitting in her lap, legs spread wide. Rebecca still feels wrung out, like a part of her never reconnected in her comedown, but she's anchored what's left in the deeply familiar; she doesn't have to think too much about the way she moves her hand, down and against and in, translating her experience to Valencia's body. Valencia leans back into Rebecca, her gasps so close to Rebecca's ear, and Rebecca throws her free arm around Valencia's waist, holding her tight as she whispers in Valencia's ear, urging her on. She's not even cognizant of the words she's saying, only knows she's speaking because her mouth is moving and she knows that she's never been able to shut herself up during sex, but Valencia either likes it or doesn't care enough to make her stop.

Valencia's whole body freezes when she comes. Like a statue. Like a work of art.

They don't move for a little while after, apart from Rebecca's other arm joining the first one around Valencia's waist. They don't talk. Don't kiss. It's not even cuddling, really. Rebecca feels like she'd be getting anxious about it if she weren't so blissed out from all the chemicals crowding her bloodstream. Eventually they shift so they're lying down, Rebecca's face pressed to Valencia's back, eyes closed, and the last thing she consciously thinks is how weird it is to be the big spoon for once.

The light has shifted again when Rebecca wakes up, sunset seeping through the fabric of the tent and tingeing everything rose gold. Valencia isn't lying next to her anymore, and Rebecca would be tempted to think the whole thing was a drug-fueled hallucination if it weren't for the fact that she's still naked overtop the sleeping bag and aching not-entirely-unpleasantly between her legs.

"Here," Valencia says, thrusting her hand in front of Rebecca's face, offering her something that Rebecca can't identify through the sleep-haze. She blinks a few times until everything comes into focus: Valencia is fully dressed again, in a different outfit she must've pulled from Rebecca's bag, and the item she's holding seems to be a wet wipe. "It's gross," Valencia insists, waving the wipe at her. "This place is so dirty. Like, actual dirt. And we didn't exactly... after..." Rebecca just keeps staring, uncomprehending, until Valencia makes a frustrated noise and tosses the wipe at Rebecca's chest. "It's for your vagina."

"Oh," Rebecca says, intelligently. "Right. That does make... yeah."

The silence stretches between them as Rebecca cleans up; she nearly puts her old clothes back on, but changes her mind when she sees how ruined they are, coated with now-dried fluid. Valencia doesn't really look at her the whole time, and Rebecca can feel the absence of attention even more clearly than if Valencia were staring.

"So," Rebecca starts tentatively once she's finished getting dressed, "that was..."

"We don't have to talk about it," Valencia cuts in, waving her hand like she can brush the topic away, like a mosquito that needs to be swatted. "We accidentally took drugs and then... engaged in some activities. It doesn't have to have some big meaning."

Rebecca knows that what Valencia's saying isn't technically wrong. It's not like Rebecca has a great track record as far as impulse control is concerned, especially sexually. But what Rebecca has also learned from a lifetime of making choices fueled purely by her libido is that those choices have the highest chance of transmogrifying into an elephant. "You're right," she says. "We don't have to talk about it. And we don't have to talk about our sadness, or our history, or Jo—" The name dies in her throat when Valencia pointedly narrows her eyes. "You-know-who. But I don't want this to be like, a whole thing between us." Rebecca's impulse control fails yet again as she reaches out to grab Valencia's hand. "I really want to be friends with you, V. For real this time."

There's a beat, and the whole scene plays out in Rebecca's mind: Valencia pulling her hand away, telling Rebecca it was all a mistake, storming out and stealing Rebecca's car to drive back to civilization. But none of that happens. Instead Valencia lets out a long-suffering sigh. "Oh my _god,_ this is why I said we didn't have to talk about it. You are _so_ corny. It's embarrassing." Another beat, and the corner of Valencia's mouth turns up. "But fine. You kidnapped me and drugged me and we're friends now. Happy?"

"I didn't drug you," Rebecca answers automatically, but she's grinning as she says it.

"Whatever," Valencia says. She pulls her hand away so she can open the zippered door of the tent; Rebecca is pretty sure she's not high anymore, but she still hallucinates the way Valencia's essence lingers on her skin, clinging, warm. "Can we please get out of here? I'm starving and I want a real smoothie. In a cup. With a straw."

Rebecca squints into the sunset glare, shading her eyes with a hand as she looks at Valencia, haloed in light, but the tranquility of the moment is broken when Rebecca's stomach grumbles. "God, I miss real food," she agrees, her words punctuated by Valencia's laughter. "Do they have smoothies at Dairy Queen? Because I still really want that chicken basket."


End file.
